


pothos

by rarmaster



Series: my body is an orphanage [5]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, Roxas and Xion are both here but it's....... less about them, anyway kh3 hYPE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 17:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13640583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarmaster/pseuds/rarmaster
Summary: When the name "Vanitas" passed from his lips unbidden, it was not something Sora had meant to say. But in this universe Sora, well aware of Ven's presence in his heart, is entirely used to accidentally saying shit one of his passengers thought. The boiling terror he feels coming off of Ven? That, he isn't as used to.





	pothos

**Author's Note:**

> of _course_ i had to write this for mbiao, ya'll
> 
> also i retconned Things about Xion's name, don't, uh, worry about it

_Hey, Ven, buddy, you doing okay?_ Sora asked when he had a moment to.

Ven responded with a resounding if silent _no!!!_ which Sora felt, incredibly strongly, along with the bubbling distress and anxiousness that had been bouncing around inside of Ven for the past… Geeze, how long had they even been in this world? Had he really been _this_ nervous the whole time?

No, no, it was getting progressively worse, Sora was certain. He supposed he could understand if the Unversed were really getting on Ven’s nerves, because he knew Ven didn’t have fond memories of the Unversed in general. But Ven was… normally pretty good about keeping a hold of his fear. And it was strange that he hadn’t just decided to disappear off in the back corners of Sora’s heart, where he could put a large distance between him and everything that was going on outside of Sora’s body. Normally if something was bugging him, he did? But instead he was in the forefront of Sora’s mind, like something was keeping him there.

‘ _Can’t you feel him??’_ Ven asked, voice filled with some kind of desperateness that edged almost into full-blown panic. ‘ _Sora can’t you FEEL him!?’_

 _Feel who?_ Sora asked in return, but it was then that he heard the sound of a Keyblade summoned, felt something press into his back. He spun around.

He came face to face with a kid about his height, wearing a black cloak and a black mask that covered his face.

“I need the half of me that rests inside your heart,” the kid said. There was something— _tight_ , about his voice, like he was struggling to keep his emotion back.

“Vanitas!” The word that passed through Sora’s lips was like a squeak, angry and terrified in equal measure. He immediately clapped a hand to his mouth, knowing _he_ wasn’t the one who’d said that, knowing well from the shame that flooded him it was Ven.

Sora took a step back. Tried to control his face.

He wanted to say something to Ven, but couldn’t process the turmoil of emotions that was going on in his heart nor the situation fast enough to come up with anything. At least he heard Xion and Roxas, after a moment:

‘ _Ven, Ven, it’s okay,’_ Xion was saying, and soft, soothing nudges reverberated through Sora’s heart. She was sending them to Ven, but things got all muddled in there sometimes and sometimes Sora tended to just feel _everything_.

‘ _Come on, man, come away from the front, let Sora handle this,’_ Roxas was saying, his words accompanied with the sensation of being tugged. Ven was being tugged. Not Sora. ‘ _It’s not like Sora’s gonna hand you over.’_

Roxas was right. Sora wasn’t. He took carefully deep breaths, careful in a way that made it hard to tell he was even taking them. He did what was probably best in this moment—even if he really wanted to be there for Ven!!—and closed himself off from the three other people that sat inside of him, forcing a wedge between him and them. He had to handle what was happening in the physical world, and let Roxas and Xion take care of Ven in the metaphysical one.

He felt himself shaking. He wanted a second more to get the wedge in place, but a second more he did not get. Vanitas lowered his Keyblade and walked towards Sora, a determined hunch in his shoulders, purpose written into the way he leaned his entire self in Sora’s direction.

“Ventus,” he said, and he laughed with it. Something in Sora ached at the sound—something that wasn’t his—because only Vanitas had ever said his name like that— _it wasn’t his name_ —and it. Hurt. It made him shudder. It stirred up something else inside of him that wasn’t even his, that Ven was frantically trying to beat down, that—

“What a strange place to slither off to,” Vanitas continued, his voice trembling, heaving with something like anger. Sora was so busy simultaneously trying to soothe and separate himself from Ven’s terror that he didn’t realize that Vanitas had reached out to him until Vanitas’s fingers pressed against his chest. The touch sent a shiver down Sora’s spine, and something like magic sparked at Vanitas's finger tips.

“Hey!” Sora shouted, smacking Vanitas’s hand away and leaping backwards. His mind blurred dizzily, but only for a moment more. Had Vanitas… tried to _yank_ Ven out of him? Sora didn’t even know that was _possible_!

Vanitas just took another step towards Sora. Sora could not see his face, but he could hear the desperation that border-lined on frenzy in Vanitas’s words. “You can feel him, can’t you!?” Vanitas demanded. “You can _feel_ Ventus, resonating with my presence! I know you can!”

“I- I have no idea what you’re talking about!!” Sora stammered. He hoped it was convincing, hoped that he sounded legitimately baffled enough. He’d had plenty of practice denying that he had passengers in his heart, over the year or so it’d been, but never had he lied when it _mattered_.

“Yes. You _do_ ,” Vanitas hissed. He took another step towards Sora. Sora took a step back. He could feel Ven inside him, shaking like a leaf in the wind. “I know he’s in there! You think I can’t feel the other half of my own damn heart!?”

“I think you’re crazy!” Sora shot back, hoping that Ven’s terror that he was still feeling very clearly (despite his frantic attempts to stop doing so) came off as the terror and/or confusion one felt when being threatened by a madman. Never had he wished for Kairi’s lying skills more than he did in this moment.

“I want him _back_!” Vanitas raised his blade again. “And I’ll _have_ him back, even if I have to cut him out of you myself!”

He lunged forward, blade aimed to cut straight into Sora’s chest. Sora yelped and fumbled to summon his own blade to block, but Roxas beat him to it. A blade of shining white burst forth into Sora’s hand, diverting the red and black of Vanitas’s blade harmlessly to the side. Roxas grabbed Sora by the metaphorical hood of his jacket and yanked him out of the front position.

“Aha!” Vanitas laughed, a sharp, gleeful thing. “There you are, Ventus.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Roxas answered through Sora’s mouth, setting his feet and readying his Keyblade at his side. “Not Ven.”

Xion’s Keyblade, black and glistening fell into Sora’s other hand, already open and waiting for it.

“Not Sora either,” she said.

Together they spun the blades with a flourish. Sora felt a satisfied smile slip onto his own lips, knew that nothing was more exhilarating to the two of them than a good fight.

Still, he was pretty certain now was absolutely the worst time to be doing this, absolute worse time to be revealing themselves. What would Mike and Sully think? What would Vanitas do with this information?? Sora slammed himself against their grip on his body, tried to pry their fingers off of him but they would not _budge_.

“Ven isn’t here,” Roxas called.

“And if he was, we wouldn’t let you have him,” Xion added.

“Now fuck off,” they both said, and lunged forward.

The two of them moved in perfect harmony, piloting Sora’s body like it was easy, even though Sora knew from experience trying to work with another person to pilot his body in tandem _wasn’t fucking easy_. He and Roxas managed alright together, but it was still awkward and rough. Roxas and Xion were the only two who managed to match each other’s movements so perfectly. Sora almost wondered if they’d had practice, because it seemed like they’d been fighting side by side for ages.

But that was silly, wasn’t it? They hadn’t known each other before both ending up in his heart. …had they?

Thinking about it made his mind go staticky, and there were more important things to worry about. Because he didn’t have a choice, he let Roxas and Xion take Vanitas, and Sora turned his attention to Ven.

They were both fully manifested in Sora’s heartspace, which had taken the shape of a beach a long time ago. Ven sat on the shore, trembling, breathing heavily. Fine, Sora thought crisply, and he hoped Roxas and Xion heard. He got it. He was good at this. He’d always been really good at this.

Sora knelt down next to Ven, putting a hand on his back.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”

Ven sent a look at him, rolled his eyes. “I know,” he said. “I _know_. I just…” He hugged his knees tighter to his chest. Didn’t answer.

“We aren’t gonna let Vanitas take you,” Sora said.

“I _know_ ,” Ven snapped. “I know you wouldn’t. Being around him is just… hard.” He hunched in on himself, chin pressed to the top of his knees. “I’m sorry you have to feel that. I’m… trying to hold it in.”

“Nah, dude, it’s fine,” Sora laughed. He thumped Ven on the back. Ven let out a sound kind of like a laugh, but maybe that was just the air expelling from his lungs. “You act like I haven’t been constantly feeling your guys’ emotions for, what, the past year? I’m used it.”

Sora thought about, maybe from there, finding a way to reassure Ven that Vanitas was probably just spouting nonsense—Sora was _very_ used to every villain he faced doing that to tick him off—but before he could even quote formulate a full thought, Ven interrupted:

“It was true. Everything Vanitas said.” Ven’s voice was small. His eyes were fixed out to the horizon, shoulders hunched. “We’re… two halves of the same whole. Or we were. I don’t think that I… _need_ him anymore, but… My heart still calls to him. And his still calls to me. It’s…” He squeezed his knees, somehow managing to appear even smaller. “Kind of scary, being around him. Feeling that.”

“Well,” Sora said, and hesitated. He wasn’t sure what to say.

He wasn’t sure if there was anything he _could_ say.

So he pried one of Ven’s hands away from his legs, threaded his fingers through Ven’s. He let their clasped hands fall into the sand.

“Listen, Roxas and Xion are kicking his ass, right now,” Sora said. “So I guess we should leave them to that. And the rest? Well. We can worry about that later.”

“…yeah,” Ven answered, slowly.

“You have us, Ven.” Sora squeezed his hand, turned to send a grin at him. “It’s gonna be okay.”


End file.
